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An Interrogator’s Confession

“Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah,” writes Eric Fair, who worked as a contract interrogator in Iraq in 2004, on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. “I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.” Fair continues:

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked.

Will Deval Patrick, the African-American governor of Massachusetts, endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign? Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi says Patrick is “torn”: “He worked for the Clinton Justice Department and basked in a Bill Clinton visit during last year’s governor’s race. But Obama also campaigned for Patrick and their favorite theme, ‘hope.’”

Two years ago this week, Jonah Goldberg challenged Juan Cole, a historian of the Middle East and a prominent liberal blogger, to a $1,000 bet: “I predict that Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it,” Goldberg wrote in National Review. “I’ll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now).” He proposed that the money be donated to a charity of the winner’s choice. This week at The Corner, Goldberg explained that he would not be donating any money because Cole declined the wager. “Goldberg thinks that pointing out that Cole turned his wager down should somehow spare him from mockery,” writes Matthew Yglesias at his personal blog. “The point, however, is still about the very, very poor prediction, not about Cole’s skills as a gambler.”

Mr. Fair is a very brave man. It’s one thing — and already brave in the current context — for people who didn’t participate to report such shameful, un-American and perhaps illegal conduct. But very few people could make that sort of confession after having participated as Mr. Fair has done.

“Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes….”. In the works of Shania Twain, “That
doesn’t impress me very much” considering you tortured and degraded defenseless prisoners. These
are more than mistakes. If the man really wants to
atone for his inhuman behavior, let him name names
and serve a reduced sentence for testifying against
the other torturers. If he can’t or won’t do that,
he should keep his mouth shut. What’s the point?
Only to “improve his best efforts”?